Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects" is rated R, according to the MPAA, "for sadistic violence, strong sexual content, language and drug use." If not for that pesky drug use, do you think we might've had a G-rated film here? Not a Rob Zombie film (though his next movie should be an all-ages musical, just to mess with our heads).

The Devil's Rejects is one of the most unremittingly unpleasant films ever made, a grubby fantasia of psychosis that barges into our faces with rotten teeth, fetid breath, armpit stench, and sharp instruments caked with clotted blood and scalp hair. You are excused from the movie, and from the rest of this review, if that sounds a bit much for you.

For the rest of us -- we few, we happy few, we band of cult-movie fanatics -- The Devil's Rejects is a labor of love sheathed in the shabby clothes of hate. Rob Zombie adores the anti-PC, take-no-prisoners horror and exploitation films of his misspent youth, and in this film and his previous effort (House of 1000 Corpses) he does what he can to bring the puke-and-piss stink of grindhouse theaters into your friendly local multiplex. (The movie should really be seen at a late Saturday-night showing, surrounded by loud and potentially violent strangers.) Zombie goes so far as to provide acting work for his drive-in heroes, from the instantly recognizable Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) and Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes) to the almost unrecognizable P.J. Soles (Halloween) and Mary Woronov (Eating Raoul). As Dave Chappelle in the persona of Rick James said: "It's a celebration, bitches!"

Those who missed House of 1000 Corpses won't have a hard time following The Devil's Rejects, even though it's a semi-sequel, bringing back the earlier film's maniacal Firefly family. As the film opens, the vengeful Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe), still nursing the loss of his cop brother at the bloody hands of the Fireflys, leads an army of officers to the remote Firefly farmhouse. The matriarch, Mother Firefly (Leslie Easterbrook, subbing for Karen Black and overacting her heart out), is arrested; the others -- sadistic Otis (Bill Moseley) and snarling wildcat Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie, the director's wife) -- escape and meet up with creepy TV clown Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), the family's default father figure. Sheriff Wydell, gradually getting more and more freaky, is hot on their trail, though not hot enough to stop the Fireflys from kidnapping a country-music family headed by Geoffrey Lewis and Priscilla Barnes.

Things begin nasty and get nastier. There are no heroes in The Devil's Rejects, just degrees of villainy. Zombie goes as far as he can within the confines of an R rating, which turns out to be pretty far. The tone of free-floating menace and unchecked sadism will be familiar to fans of such grindhouse classics as Fight for Your Life, I Spit on Your Grave, and particularly The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (there's a horrific sick joke involving the swapping of a victim's face). There are enough looming gravel-voiced madmen and nutbrain monologues (Robert Trebor has an antic appearance as a movie critic called in for his Marx Brothers expertise) to keep Quentin Tarantino happily chortling for days. There's an extended finale, set to the mournful twang of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" — one of many stained-beard rock standards on the soundtrack; the movie is set in 1978, after all — that touches brilliance and deeply divides our responses (We want these sick fucks to die!...Except we don't....But we should!...And yet, we don't).

I enjoyed The Devil's Rejects on the same level that I enjoyed House of 1000 Corpses -- as a tribute. Rob Zombie desperately wants to reproduce the snarling teeth of the cult films he reveres, which isn't the same as making his own cult films. They're cultish by default -- they're so arrogantly, gleefully ugly they don't look like anything else out there (the same was true of Alexandre Aja's High Tension). Zombie is genuflecting at the altar of Tobe Hooper and Sam Peckinpah and a hundred forgotten Z-movie directors. The result is fun but won't truly disturb anyone who's seen the same movies Zombie has (heck, you only have to go as far as Natural Born Killers and the first hour of From Dusk Till Dawn, the latter of which is echoed very strongly here).

I'm not saying that Quentin Tarantino has or should have a monopoly on grindhouse homage; the more directors working in that disreputable form, the more fun for us cult-film geeks, I suppose. But I'd like to see what else Zombie has up his sleeve. If, indeed, he has anything else.

OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2005 CineVegas Film Festival For more in the 2005 CineVegas Film Festival series, click here.
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User Comments

9/13/17

morris campbell

updated review sleazy & sadistic trash

2/20/17

morris campbell

THE ONLY DECENT ROB ZOMBIE MOVIE

3/29/15

Jeff WIlder

Easily Rob Zombie's best film.

7/06/12

Groucho Marx

Rob Zombie fucked up my legacy. Fuck you.

10/12/10

Josie Cotton is a goddess

Great homagesploitation to '70's shock classics! Sequel to 'House Of 1000 Corpses.'

10/11/10

J.P. Ward

Loud & obnoxious. The Phantom Menace meets grindhouse horror.

7/03/10

art

THE killer's reminded me of the MANSON family,THREE CHEERS for ROB ZOMBIE!

5/08/10

eddie

pointless and worthless flick

1/18/10

TravisN

It made me feel unclean. And that's coming from a guy who likes NBK and A Clockwork Orange.

10/14/09

art

ROB SHOULD STICK TO FLICK"S LIKE THIS,and not trifle with HORROR ICON"S LIKE HALLOWEEN!

8/14/09

Leo

One of the worst movies ever made. Rob Zombie is a hack.

7/20/09

matt

completely gratuitous and sadistic, but extremely well made

6/26/09

brian

Disgusting, but so much so that you can't take it seriously. Not for everybody.